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Monday, November 23, 2015

A Series of Firsts

I ran into an old coworker the other day and she asked about my ex and I had to tell her that we were no longer together. She was astounded, but shared with me a bit of wisedom.

She said that losing her mom was the hardest thing she had gone through and that it took a full year to start getting over it. Because she had to go through all the firsts. There was the first Christmas without her mother, the first time she didn't get a birthday card from her mom, and so on.

She told me that the firsts are the hardest. But once you make it through the firsts, it gets better.

This will be my first Thanksgiving, Hannukah, birthday, Christmas, New Years since the break up. And I've been pretty torn up about it. I don't even want to celebrate with my family because it's the first time I won't have my ex with me (we had been together over nine years, it's hard to remember before that, so give me a break, yeah?).

Even worse than that, I can't stand to be surrounded by happy couples. I'm still a shitty friend who is jealous of her friends' happiness. Not that I don't want them to have that, and I am happy for them, but I am also too full of sadness for me. So I try to be happy for them while I am away from them.

But this is the first holiday season that I've been single in so long, after having had so much love and happiness and losing that. And the first is the hardest, right?

I hope you will all forgive me if I am distant this holiday season. Sometimes it's just better for the people around me and easier for me if I am by myself.